Rock face sampling is used in some gold mining operations during development drifting to make operational and ore body decisions. Such sampling is typically done at the cutting face in an underground tunnel although may also be applied in above ground situations. Either way, rock sampling practices are presently done by manual techniques such as chipping the rock with a hammer and chisel which not only involve extensive manual labour but also the problem that the resultant samples can be both biased and imprecise, regardless of downstream preparation and assaying practices.
It is typically desired to take the rock samples from a channel of constant cross-section cut across the rock face as the value of the result is severely limited by the variable width and depth of the channel cut using manual techniques. This is particularly true when the samples are used for assaying.